Possession
by Caladria101
Summary: [SJ] And if there was something in him that warned that knowing these intimate little details was dangerous, then he ignored it


_She looked at him. He held the 'zat steady, ignoring everything except the immediate task. Ignoring the fact that he was about to condemn the woman he loved to a death that she did not deserve. Ignoring the fact that the body that received the shot he was about to fire was blameless, free from guilt._

_As soon as she – it – collapsed, he walked over. Slowly. He wasn't sure if he could face her face in death. _

_There must be – there had to be…_

_No. Gone…_

_And he couldn't let go._

_And then she had called out to them – to him. And behind the feigned impassiveness and professional worry his heart was beating wildly, his eyes unable to look away from the screens that claimed her presence._

_We heard. Because he'd always hear her. And he let out the breath that he didn't know he'd be holding in, even if the tenseness wouldn't leave his muscles for some hours yet._

o…O…o

She'd slipped back into an unconsciousness that looked peaceful. And it was Carter. _His_ Carter, definitively and definitely. It was the quirk of the lips, and the slight worry in the eyes, and the way that she lay. It was the way her fingers curled. And if there was something in him warning that knowing these intimate little details was dangerous, then he ignored it. Because, when the time had come, he'd done the right thing. He'd thought he'd forced the life to flee from her body as surely as the entity had done.

And yet, he knew the truth. He hadn't had the strength of will to kill Carter. Because Carter was so inextricably bound with him that he wasn't even sure if he could. Because when he'd looked into those eyes, he hadn't seen Carter, any more than he'd seen Charlie Kawalsky when he'd been possessed by the Goa'uld. He'd seen Carter's body – _Sam's _body, and at the thought of that illicit syllable he almost glanced around, because even saying her name in his head seemed perverse. Not only like he'd defiled her but defiled also the uniforms they wore.

He'd killed the thing that had possessed her body. In desperation. Because he'd stared into those eyes for one short moment that had lasted for an eternity, and he'd seen no traces of Carter. None of her strength, or determination, or the non-regulation humour that he could coax out of her. Nothing of her intelligence and nothing of the spirit that was even more beautiful than the body in which it had inhabited. And in that moment, he'd almost lost the will to continue.

And that was why he could shoot her. Because he'd lost her the moment the entity had gained a physical body. He wasn't even sure, in that moment, whether he'd been fully attached to his own body. Somewhere, some part of him was railing against her loss. Was angry. Was _furious. _Wanted to hunt that thing down and make it suffer. Was huddled in a corner of his mind in the utter despair of the hopeless. Was begging her to just _come back._

Because he'd had hope, and joy, and laughter once. Had had moments where he thought that there was no way in which life could be any more than it was. And he'd lost all of that, years ago, but then he had somehow regained a measure of it. And having that ripped from him, being taken back down the abyss he'd crawled out of was the stuff of his worst nightmares. And his nightmares got pretty damn bad.

She stirred. He watched with a rapt fascination that drank in every single movement that labelled her Sam Carter. That thrilled when her eyes sought him out and blinked a sleepy recognition.

"Hey," he said gently, pre-empting any formal recognition from her. Because he wanted to pretend, he wanted to believe for one single, precious moment that there were no barriers in their way. He wanted to tell her how much she'd scared him, had separated him from the reality of everything, his fear and loss were so great, but the lump in his throat told him that if he spoke now, his tone of voice would take away all their hard work of the past few months, would bare his feelings so much more completely than an alien device wielded by an unsympathetic inquisition.

Her lips moved, trying to form a sentence, her throat sore from the intubation, her body protesting at the trauma it had been put through in its owner's absence.

He offered her water, thankful that she needed him for at least this one small task. He should be getting the Doc now, sharing the good news, but he didn't. He wanted this moment, these fragile few minutes of her first consciousness to claim as his own.

She cleared her throat. "It's gone?" Her mute appeal for the horror to be over shouldn't have been so heartening, but he remembered all too well her blankness after Jolinar, her complete detachment from the world. It had been hard enough seeing his friend go through that… he wasn't sure he'd've been able to do it now. Not after…

"Yeah. Gone. You're you." He wanted… he wanted to grab her in a hug, to pull her close enough that nothing could ever reach her again, to just feel her there. To feel her hold him back with as much desperation as he held her and to ground her, to bring her back to the reality of a world where she wasn't a passive observer in her own mind. Or to ground him in a reality where he hadn't lost her.

"God," she whispered, and she'd turned her head away from him, and he'd instinctively known that she hated people to see her cry, despised it as a show of weakness. And he'd never have the eloquence or the words to explain that it was a display of her strength, that it was her confronting her fears and dealing with them rather than locking them up. Because he couldn't. Because there could be a bitter lump in his throat and a sting in his eyes, and his jaws could ache, but he hadn't cried for years. And there were days when he wished he could. Because there were so many people that deserved his tears. And he couldn't give them.

"Sam…" he said almost pleadingly. _Almost_. Because one of them had to be strong, and if it was him for once then so be it. He held the hand nearest to him between his two larger ones, carefully, reverently, brushing over the sterile covering of her burn. He could feel the texture of it, smell it from how close he was holding it. _It was real_. The wound had come from a time previous, before he'd lost her. And her fingers were warm between his and _they were hers._ Not the cold lifeless thing that had inhabited them. But hers. And he didn't care, for this one moment. Didn't care that he shouldn't be holding her hand, that he wasn't allowed to plead with her to stay. He never would be. But he needed to. He needed this one, small, physical contact because he needed to believe. He needed to _know._

She turned her head back, apparently having composed herself in that short time. Always the perfect one, his Major. She didn't acknowledge that he'd used her given name for the first time in a forever, didn't even bring him back to earth with that dreaded three letter word. She just shared the moment with him.

And it lasted…

"So… Carter," he said once it had stretched for eternity, five seconds, an hour… he wasn't sure. He didn't care. "What've I told you about doing stuff like this?"

She laughed. Or she tried to pretend that she didn't want to laugh, but he had her pegged. And the startling vivacity of life there was amazing, took his breath away almost. God, how old was he?

"Still Tuesday?" she asked after a moment.

"Yeah, you didn't get knocked that bad, I'm afraid, so I still want that paperwork."

"Already done, Sir."

She was perfect. Right down into the look in her eyes that said she knew just how much that little fact irked him and thrilled him in equal measure.

He realised that he was still holding her hand, running the lightest of touches over the burn and feeling the absurdist desire to try and kiss it better. Because she looked… defeated, apart from that one spark. Lost. And he wanted to be the one to bring her home. But he couldn't. And he'd never be that one for her. He'd never be the hands and voice that soothed her out of a nightmare, or the one to bring her coffee in bed to prepare her to face the day. He'd never even be what he thought he should be for her. The solid rock that she leant on, the helping hand that could coax her into finding herself. But he'd never be that for her; she was the one who was that person for him. And so… he'd live with what he had – that first smile, the first words. The first tentative appearance of the essence of who she was.

It was never going to be enough. But as he made a complete fool of himself for her, he wondered if maybe what he had wasn't so bad.


End file.
